Wendell Jones is talking trash.
Jones, who is in the recycling business himself as the owner of Happy Face Recycling, is not happy with changes made to Nakusp’s municipal recycling program, which is part of a larger contract between the regional government arm of the RDCK – Regional District of the Central Kootenays – and Houston, Texas-based contractor Waste Management.
New all-in-one bins are wasteful in a town where people are accustomed to separating trash into recyclable categories, Jones said of Waste Management’s new system.
While a series of individual bins at the site near the arena have multiple holes in them, all the stuff deposited goes right into a comingled pile.
The material will get put into a compacting truck, compacted, transported, then decompacted and sorted through for recycling, “all the stuff we already sorted through once,” Jones said, watching as one customer after another came to deposit cardboard, paper, plastic. “I don’t know why we’ll pay someone to do something we used to do for free. We’ll haul it to Kelowna and we’ll pay someone there to sort through the stuff we’ve sorted already. This is progress?”
Jones’ company functions a bottle depot and general recycler of everything from building supplies to milk containers and furniture.
The new system put into place by RDCK contractor Waste Management lacks economic logic, he said.
“I’d like to know how trucking it to the other side of the planet and sifting through it there makes sense,” Jones said.
“I’m not nearly as clever as all these elected fellows, but it seems to me we should have to do our sorting here like they’ve taught us. If it’s a make-work project, we need the jobs here,” he said.
“Nakusp can’t afford to be farming out our jobs anywhere else. We’ve lost businesses on Main Street in the last year. We don’t need the jobs here, so we’re just hiring someone to do the same work over? They try to sell us that this is better. Well, I fail to see the advantage.”
One man who asked not to be identified said a simplified system was better.
“It means a lot more people will recycle – it’s better than burning it in the back yard – or dumping it in illegal dumping sites,” he said.
Jones disagreed.
“This is a step backwards,” he said. “I’m passionate about this – we recycle. We’re such good recyclers here, we take care of this pretty good. The big bins (previously in place with the pre-sorted system) catered toward people sorting it.”
Jones said he’s making his voice heard on the issue.
“I spent 4.5 hours speaking to every government (official) I could find the other day. I had no luck tracking down anything that made any sense,” he said.
Don Lindsay is just happy to have a system in place that will help him reduce, reuse or recycle.
“To be completely honest, my kids won’t let me live any other way — the generation that follows me is keeping me on task,” he said.
“Reason number two is because I know they’re right about recycling, and we should be conscious of it at all times. Which is not the way I grew up,” said Lindsay.
“I grew up thinking everything was forever and it would always be available to us,” he said.
Lindsay said his daughter who lives in Mexico City is so accustomed to recycling that she continues to separate her trash there, even there is no “reciclado” there.
Mike Morrison is the resource recovery manager for RDCK.
According to RDCK figures, the Nakusp recycling figures have hovered around 12 tons a month, average.
Waste Management has been the RDCK contractor for recycling since 2008. In the previous system in place in Nakusp and other municipalities, roll-off bins with multiple dividers required users to separate out their recyclables.
“The system had high cost, because the density of the material was low,” Morrison said.
The East Subregion was the first to use the front-load can system, now being introduced in Nakusp and the rest of the West Subregion.
“It’s overall much more efficient to collect multiple bins at a time,” Morrison said.
The collection vehicles have onboard compaction systems – a system that allows the vehicles to collect more on a single trip, Morrison said.
“It reduces greenhouse gas emissions, increases hauling efficiency and ultimately will save taxpayers money,” he said.
The system where all the recyclables are comingled in Nakusp and then separated out at Metro Materials Recovery, a high-tech Kelowna facility, is most efficient, he said.
“The sorting costs are more than offset by the improved trucking efficiency by having a comingled stream,” Morrison said.
At Metro Materials Recovery, a system using magnets, screens and air classifiers is used to sort the recyclables back into individual components.
Nakusp Mayor Karen Hamling said there has been some concern about the WM recyling site at the arena.
“I did send an email today because that place is absolutely stuffed,” she said in Tuesday’s Village Council meeting.
Complaints about overstuffing at the new Nakusp bins by the arena have to do with the company getting into the rhythm of what the community’s needs are, Morrison said.
“The contract with Waste Management requires them to create a schedule that matches the demand at the facility … If there’s a mess left, they’re required to clear it up,” he said. It’s in the company’s best interest to schedule pick-ups so there isn’t anything left, he said.
“They can add more bins or adjust the schedule itself,” he said.
“As the program is fairly new, they’re still working out the demands (for number of bins and servicing frequency),” Morrison said.
“It will be a work in progress for a short while but generally, Waste Management has done a good job of keeping on top of servicing requirements,” he said. “I believe they’re on a three-day-a-week servicing schedule.”
The cost of the recycling program is paid out of tipping fees and taxation in the West Subregion service area.
Under the new contract with the Houston-based Waste Management, the company is dispatched out of Castlegar and paid an overall flat rate of about $15,000 a month, and a per-ton rate for processing the recyclables that is somewhere in the range of about $190 per ton. The value of the materials sent out to the global commodities market for things like cardboard is rebated, split 50/50 with the RDCK and Waste Management, Morrison said.
Other municipalities with similar contracts include West Subregion communities from Edgewood to the border of the Okanagan. Trout Lake, regions H, I, J and K, and the villages of Silverton, New Denver, Slocan and Castlegar.
